My Special Place

By: MaryChar Erickson

Many people have places that have special meaning to them for many different reasons. It could be a place where you can clear your mind or a place where you know you are important. My special place is daycare; I practically grew up there. My mom works there, and we ended up buying the businesses after a couple of years.

I grew up going to the "Green Center". That center was located at Sacred Heart Hospital. My mother worked there along with my other Pre-school teacher, Miss Sue. Sue is one of my mom’s best friends I truly don’t remember my life without her. Many people have thought that she was my mom’s daughter, so we call her our sister. She definitely was a major part of my life that is irreplaceable. At the green center the hospital cafeteria provided the meals, was always an interesting experience. Every once in while I would head over to the "Yellow Center" which was located at HSC. I had a couple friends that went there when they were bored. They were the oldest children there, and they had to go to HSC because there were no openings at the Green Center. I grew up with many advantages at the daycare because I was the boss’s daughter.

In kindergarten I moved to the "blue center" which was for school aged children. After morning kindergarten, my mom would pick the daycare kids and me up, and we would eat lunch and go to West Side Park and play with Barbie’s on a blanket in the nice weather. I was on top of the world. I got to be with my mom and my best friends all at the same time.

I grew up at daycare and rode the daycare van until 5^th grade and went to work at daycare almost everyday of middle school except for sport seasons. As soon as I turned fourteen my mother put me on payroll, and I started working a lot. I love working at daycare. The children make life wonderful. The smiles on their faces when they recognize you and run to you when they see you and want you to pick them up is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Some of the children at daycare capture your heart, and you get to know their parents, and they steal a part of you. That is what is so wonderful about working with children.